Tag Archives: community building

How’s this for engaging with the community: the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Carnegie Museum of Art (in Pittsburgh) have thrown their weight behind their football teams (that would be the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers, respectively) in a really brilliant way.

Here’s how it works:

If the Steelers with the Superbowl, the Carnegie Museum of Art will receive Gustave Caillebotte’s “Boating on the Yerres” on a three-month loan.

If the Packers win the Superbowl, the Milwaukee Art Museum will receive Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s “Bathers with a Crab” on a three-month loan.

The museum directors are even doing some trash-talking:

Milwaukee Museum of Art director Daniel Keegan said in a statement to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that he is already preparing a space for the Renoir.“I’m confident we will be enjoying the Renoir from the Carnegie Museum of Art very soon,” the Green Bay native told the paper. “I look forward to displaying it where the public can enjoy it and be reminded of the superiority of the Green Bay Packers.”

Lynn Zelevansky, the director at Carnegie, had a retort for her Cheesehead counterpart.

“In Pittsburgh, we believe trash talk is bad form,” Zelevansky said in a statement. “We let the excellence of our football team, and our collection, speak for itself. It will be my great pleasure to see the Caillebotte from the Milwaukee Museum of Art hang in our galleries.”

How brilliant is that? Can we talk the MFA into doing this the next time the Patriots make the trip to the Superbowl?